Casinos and other gaming establishments are continually looking for ways to make gaming fresher and more exciting for their patrons. New approaches for varying existing gaming and for otherwise servicing patrons are highly desirable. For example, certain gaming machines can include a bonus feature. In a progressive slot game, the prize for a particular winning event is increased as players make wagers. Once a player wins the progressive prize, the prize resets to an initial value. Prior progressive gaming systems have linked slot machines together so that the progressive prize(s) are incremented by wagers across a number of machines. These prior gaming systems also included a mystery linked jackpot, which is a jackpot where existing gaming machines are linked to a central jackpot controller that awards a prize periodically to a triggering gaming machine. The mystery aspect of this jackpot is that there is no linkage—from the perspective of the player—between the game outcome at the triggering gaming machine and the prize being awarded at the completion of a game cycle.
The lack of linkage between player action and a mystery prize being awarded has been seen as a deficiency of mystery jackpots. This is because the player lacks anticipation (e.g., the build-up to a win that a player experiences when they participate in a bonus feature) since he or she is unaware of the triggering event that would result in the mystery prize being awarded due to the lack of linkage. Therefore, there remains a need to provide player anticipation for mystery jackpots. There also remains a need to allow for mystery jackpots to be awarded across different platforms (e.g., across competing vendor base games).
Prior progressive gaming systems also do not allow players to choose which progressive jackpot they wish to participate in at a given gaming machine. Rather, players are inconveniently forced to select a gaming machine based on the progressive jackpot available thereon. For example, players may move from a gaming machine on a first progressive link to another gaming machine that is on another progressive link. A major focus of casino operation is concerned with getting players to sit down at a gaming machine and stay there. Any time a player gets up, for whatever reason, there is a chance they will leave the casino or not initiate play again. One problem with such conventional systems, is that jackpot bonus features are required to be embedded within the game software, necessitating a re-approval by gaming regulators. While this may be overcome by including the bonus feature in the initial development of the game, it is known to be desirable to deploy bonus features at a later date, after independently establishing the game itself, as a means of extending the life of a successful game. Furthermore, bonus features are typically developed independently of games.
Accordingly, what is needed is a system or method which decouples bonus features from base games of a game system. An approach which provides a player the ability to select from available bonus features is also needed. The present disclosure addresses these and other needs.